


The Colors

by americanphancakes



Series: Phanlight Zone 2018 [4]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Death, Drawing, Gen, Horror, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Multiple Off-Screen Deaths, One Shot, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 16:39:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16391312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americanphancakes/pseuds/americanphancakes
Summary: Dan keeps having dreams of people he's never met, and then feels the irrepressible urge to draw their portraits the next morning. Eventually, though, he learns that the people he's drawn are all dying one by one, and there's nothing he can do to stop it.The Phanlight Zone #4!





	The Colors

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by two prompts from the ravensrepository tumblr blog: [This one](http://ravensrepository.tumblr.com/post/129619702815/prompt-397) and [this one.](http://ravensrepository.tumblr.com/post/88198691260/prompt-87) That blog was instrumental in my ability to come up with some fic ideas for Phanlight Zone so I am massively appreciative of these prompts.
> 
> And I'm REALLY proud of how this fic turned out, actually! It's probably my favorite of the stories I've posted so far. I hope you like it!

Dan awoke from yet another one of his dreams.

They were always incredibly vivid, though a bit surreal. The person in the foreground was always very realistic and very detailed. He’d never seen them before, though, so it was baffling how he could know so much about their face, hair, beauty marks, scars, tattoos, and other such specifics.

The backgrounds of his dreams were always more vague. There would be particular objects floating around which were easily discernible, but their details would be sparse. The overall color behind those objects was like a fog of arbitrarily colored clouds. Sometimes it was like a vortex, the way the colors swirled and circled around; sometimes it was like overlapping scribbles.

The most disturbing thing about these dreams, though, was Dan’s irrepressible urge to draw what he’d seen. From the second he woke up, the urge would overtake him and it was utterly uncontrollable. The first time he had one he tried to order colored pencils and paper from Amazon, but he couldn’t stomach the idea of waiting two days for them to arrive. He needed to actually leave the flat and get them himself so he had them on hand immediately. He walked out the front door wordlessly, acting the way he often did when depressed and in desperate need of space, which meant that Phil was quite confused when Dan returned after a span of minutes rather than hours as he normally did under such circumstances.

“Dan? What are you--”

“Can’t talk. Gotta draw.”

Dan flew past Phil into his bedroom and shut the door. Phil, confused but not unaccustomed to Dan suddenly getting urges to do creative things from time to time, shrugged and returned to playing video games in the lounge.

 

***

 

There were 11 portraits hanging on Dan’s wall now. Dan’s hyperfocused state when drawing them concerned Phil greatly. Dan was like a creature possessed. Image after image, day after day, Dan would dream, and then he would draw. Dan would ask if Phil recognized any of the people in them. Perhaps they were neighbors or local retail shop workers or fans they’d met at YouTube conventions or something. But Phil had never seen any of them before.

One night, Dan was on his laptop when he came across a local news story about a formerly missing person who was found dead. He looked at the photo. It was a man in his late 30s, head shaved due to an obviously receding hairline. He was wearing a red polo shirt and had blue-green eyes and a smile revealing crooked teeth. He had a kind face, like a nice neighbor you’d borrow gardening tools from.

He’d been found under a bridge on a drab rainy day, the victim of an apparent suicide, his car parked above it with the engine off and the lights still on.

But the circumstances of his death weren’t what interested Dan at first. It was the man himself. Dan knew his face.

He carried his laptop over to his room and compared the man’s photo to the first dream portrait he’d drawn.

In front of swirls of light gray and beige, the man in the red polo shirt was smiling back at Dan, his blue-green eyes pleasantly lit up, his crooked teeth showing. In the background, unattached to anything, Dan had drawn a bridge and a blue car with its lights on.

Dan’s breathing quickened.  _ Just a coincidence, _ he told himself.  _ Just a very oddly accurate coincidence. The man I drew doesn’t exist. He can’t possibly. I’m not psychic or anything, that sort of thing isn’t real. It’s just a coincidence. _

Phil suddenly ran in. “Dan, did you see--” He stopped himself short when he saw Dan’s pallid complexion.

“Yeah,” Dan said quietly, with a nod, still staring at his drawing. “I saw.”

 

***

 

Once is a coincidence. Twice is a pattern.

Dan stared at his second drawing: that of a brown-haired girl, who he now knew was sixteen years old. She, too, was dead, according to the news. A tragic accident on a ride at Alton Towers, where she’d apparently gone with friends one unusually sunny day. And in the background of her drawing, among the blue and yellow fog, Dan had drawn a rollercoaster cart and a group of indistinct silhouettes resembling friends walking together.

“Phil, it happened again.”

Phil came in and saw Dan, once again looking petrified.

Dan looked at Phil. “What’s happening?” he asked breathlessly. “What do I do?”

Phil shook his head. “I don’t… I don’t know.”

 

***

 

A third news report came out. Then a fourth. Then a fifth. Everyone he drew was dying, and he’d only drawn relatively young people -- none of these deaths were of natural causes or late-in-life illnesses; they were all untimely. 

And there were 6 left.

He briefly thought that maybe he could use the background items to figure out what was going to kill them, that maybe he could give the police tips that could save these people. But he simply didn’t have enough information. He couldn’t tell where these deaths would occur exactly. The rollercoaster cart Dan drew wasn’t themed, it was vague and generic. That accident could have been at any one of several theme parks in the UK, perhaps even around the world. And the bridge in the first drawing was a very common design. It had no details clarifying which specific bridge it was. The background objects in other drawings were similarly vague. Street signs were too blurry to read. House exteriors were rarely shown; the two times they were, the house numbers were omitted or obscured.

Besides, even if Dan had drawn any reliable landmarks, there didn’t seem to be a pattern for how long it took after each drawing for the subject to meet their end. 

What would he tell the police? “I know this 34 year old woman is going to die! When? I don’t know, but it’s going to have something to do with a screwdriver. How do I know? Magical psychic powers that are severely limited.”

Dan would talk to Phil about feeling so helpless, hopeless, and exhausted by this ‘gift.’ He could foretell these deaths, but, tragically, he couldn’t possibly do anything to prevent them. He only had enough to confirm them after the fact.

It felt like a cruel joke.

 

***

 

Dan woke up the next morning with the urge to draw again.

During the process of drawing these portraits, Dan never really saw what he was drawing. He saw what colors he was choosing, the curve he was putting on the paper at each individual moment. He aware only of the detail work. He didn’t know what his subjects actually looked like until he was finished and had snapped out of the work haze he’d been in, back into reality.

And when he was finally able to zoom out on this one, he saw the last person he ever expected to see. His breath caught, his chest squeezed, and the rest of him felt like it went numb.

He’d drawn  _ himself. _

In a panic, he tried to examine the details in the background. He didn’t have enough information to stop the other deaths, but he knew his own life and his own world - perhaps he could prevent his own.

But the only details he’d drawn were… lines. Squiggly, zig-zagging lines against a flat gray background. No signs, no shop fronts, no rooms in their apartment, no pieces of furniture. Nothing to go on. Nothing at all.

“What the fuck,” he muttered under his breath in a panic. His eyes filled with frightened tears.

He didn’t put it up on the wall. Maybe if he couldn’t see it, it wouldn’t be real.

 

***

 

And the next morning… he drew Phil too.

Same gray background. Same nondescript wavy lines.

He sobbed as he put this drawing in the desk drawer on top of his own. He was so afraid. He and Phil were going to die, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

 

***

 

As more news reports came out confirming Dan’s drawings as real, Phil could sense the tension and anxiety Dan was constantly feeling. It seemed to radiate off him.

“Dan, I know this is terrifying,” he said, trying to be reassuring. “But there are a lot of deaths that happen every day that we can’t do anything about. If we worried about those all the time, we’d all go mad.”

“Guess I’m going mad then,” Dan said, then adding under his breath, “I hope I’m going mad.”

“Their deaths aren’t your fault.”

“It feels like they are.”

“But they’re not. Whatever power it is that’s giving you these dreams, they’re not giving you enough to save them. You can’t blame yourself.”

“But… Phil…” Dan steeled himself, preparing to tell Phil the thing he was most afraid of telling him. “What if I drew someone… someone I know?”

“I… I don’t know. I’m really sorry, Dan. I’m sorry you have to know that person is going to die, but… if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen.”

Dan started crying. “Phil, I… I drew us,” he said weakly.

Phil froze. “You what?”

“I drew  _ us _ . And… I can’t tell what’s going to kill us. The pictures didn’t help.”

“Let me see them!” Phil said urgently.

Dan hopped up and ran to the desk drawer where the drawings were hidden away. “See?” he said, handing them to Phil.

Phil studied the drawings, just as baffled as Dan had been. He shook his head. “What does this mean, though?” he said, his own panic now beginning to set in.

“I don’t know!” Dan exclaimed, furiously afraid. “They look like, just… lines!”

“Or fractures maybe,” Phil said. “Like… do we break all our bones or something?”

“I don’t know!” Dan exclaimed. “I don’t fucking know.” He sighed and covered his eyes with the heels of his palms, then took a breath. He folded his arms and stared into space. “I mean… we’re all gonna die someday, yeah?” he finally said with a bitter chuckle.

Phil, more saddened by Dan’s display of helpless fear than he was scared for his own life, approached Dan and put his hand on his shoulder.

“We’ll figure this out,” he said resolutely. “We will.”

Dan nodded, despite not believing Phil at all.

 

***

 

They did their best to live their lives as normally as possible after that, refusing to acknowledge the tightness they felt in their stomachs whenever they heard about an untimely death on the news. They got up, ate breakfast, watched anime, made or edited videos, and went to sleep. Or tried to anyway - Dan would often stay up late, unable to rest, hypervigilant about anything he saw out of his periphery that resembled one of those squiggly lines. He found himself getting easily freaked out by stray pencil marks, cracked dishes, and even his own hairs stuck on the shower wall. 

Then one day, Dan learned of the 11th death. That meant he and Phil were next. And he didn’t know when.

Tired, desperate, and not knowing what else to do, Dan stayed awake all night scouring the web for ideas on what these ridiculous lines might be. Before he knew it, the sun was rising. The apartment was flat and shadowless in the dull light of the early morning, diffused as it was by the clouds. It felt like the sky was putting a shroud over Dan and Phil’s home.  _ Appropriate, _ Dan thought.

He picked up the drawings, which lately remained on the coffee table. They were as informative as ever. One particular squiggle on Phil’s photo reminded Dan of the crack in Amy Pond’s wall on  _ Doctor Who. _ He chuckled. Maybe there was a dimensional rift that was going to make Dan and Phil suddenly not exist. It was as good a theory as any. He shook his head and put the drawings down.

He walked over to the back door and looked out the window.  _ Goodbye, world, _ he thought.  _ I never liked you much anyway, but the good parts of you were pretty great. Goodbye pigeons. Goodbye pavement. Goodbye grey sky. Goodb-- wait a second. _

Dan looked again at the drawings of him and Phil. Gray. Like the sky. He thought back to the previous deaths. The man who committed suicide on a rainy day had a gray and beige background behind him. Whenever it was especially rainy in London, that was basically what the sky looked like. Rollercoaster girl had died on a sunny day, and had blue and yellow decorating the background of her drawing. Another man, who had died late at night, had black and navy blue behind him. And one woman who died during twilight had the vivid oranges and deep pinks of sunset mixed into her background.

And now the sky was the same flat gray that Dan had drawn behind himself and Phil.

He ran into Phil’s room and shook him awake. “Phil!” he yelled. “Phil! Wake up!”

“Mmh…” Phil groaned. He rubbed his eyes, annoyed until he remembered their predicament and adrenaline kicked in. He sat up. “What is it?”

“The sky is grey, Phil!”

Phil relaxed slightly. “We’re in London, Dan. The sky is always grey.”

“No but it’s the  _ same _ grey! Look!” Dan held up the drawings.

“I don’t get it,” Phil said, still blinking away sleep.

“Everyone who died, their… their picture, it’s-- the background, it’s the sky, Phil!”

“Wait, slow down. Start again?”

“The backgrounds in my drawings aren’t just random colours. They’re what the sky looked like when these people died!”

“Well then this definitely isn’t helpful. Like I said, the sky is nearly  _ always _ grey.”

“But it’s the  _ same grey!” _ Dan cried, exasperated. “Not like the same exact shade, that’d be basically impossible to do. I just mean all over the background, it’s all the same grey, it’s  _ one _ grey. Not multiple shades of light and dark mixed together, not blue and grey, not beige or anything. It’s one flat shade! It’s  _ only _ that flat when it’s overcast, and it’s  _ only _ still grey in the morning before the sun rises too much, because then it goes more white!”

Phil let himself listen. He was starting to understand.

“Phil,” Dan said gravely as he could, “we’re going to die. And I think we’re going to die  _ right now.” _

“What… what do we do?” Phil asked, getting out of bed and suddenly feeling very awake. He slipped on a t-shirt and lounge pants out of sheer force of habit while he listened to Dan.

“I don’t know,” Dan said, pacing the floor and wringing his hands. “I don’t know if we should leave or stay or what, to be honest. I think we have to try and hurry up figuring out what the fuck those squiggly lines are, or else w-- oh my god.” Dan blinked.

“What?”

He turned heel to face Phil, his eyes wide. “The crack in the wall.”

“What are you on about?”

“From Doctor Who, remember when Matt Smith first started there was that whole crack in the wall thing?” Dan started looking all around the walls of the house, especially near the ceilings.

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to bet you anything  _ that’s _ what those squiggly lines are. Cracks.” Dan dashed out of the room and kept looking at the areas around the doors, windows, and ceiling for cracks.

Phil followed him, looking around as well now that he’d caught Dan’s drift.

“There,” Dan said, pointing up at the ceiling just above the PC in the gaming room. “That was not there before.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

There were cracks reaching from the corners of doorways up towards the ceiling in multiple rooms, and both Dan and Phil were reasonably certain none of them had been there until recently.

Suddenly, they felt the building settle.

“What the fuck was that?” Dan said.

“I don’t know but I think we have to get out,” Phil replied. The building settled once more. “Right now!”

Dan and Phil rushed out of their flat and into the hallway where they found a fire alarm. Dan pulled it just in case anyone was still asleep - luckily the sudden movement of the building had apparently jerked many of their neighbors awake, but even they were bleary-eyed and barely aware as they stumbled out of their homes. Dan and Phil ran outside, still in their pajamas, and ran across the street. They had no idea how far from the building they needed to be, but they hoped this was far enough.

The building visibly settled again, startling both of them. Their neighbors were still filing out as quickly as they could.

“I’m gonna go help,” Phil said suddenly.

“Phil, wait!” Dan called, trying to stop him, but he was already crossing back toward the building. 

He stood outside the door, guiding people out the front for a few minutes, before Dan saw him go inside.

“Phil!” Dan yelled. He ran over to the clearly collapsing building, hoping beyond hope that he could find Phil and get them both the hell out of there in time. He pushed past the people who were all, quite intelligently, walking the other direction with a purpose. “Phil?” he called. No reply. “Phil!?” He walked around the building’s ground and first floors before nearly giving up. He tried again. “Phil!!”

“Dan!” Phil’s voice came from around a corner. “Come help me!”

Dan followed the sound and found Phil inside one of the flats, in what was obviously a child’s bedroom. Dan gasped. The idea of a child still being at risk horrified him. His eyes went to Phil, who was crouching down in front of the twin size bed.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Phil was saying in a calming, sweet voice. “You have to get out of there though, yeah?”

Dan crouched down next to Phil to see a little boy, no older than 5 or 6, hiding under his bed and looking absolutely terrified. He was shaking his head in response to Phil’s question, grasping onto a stuffed dog.

Dan smiled. He’d never had a dream about this boy. He’d never drawn him. He was going to live. Dan resolved to save him even if it really was the last thing he’d ever do.

“Hey you,” Dan said quietly. “Where are your parents?”

“Mummy works nighttimes,” the boy said. “My sister watches me but… um... she ran away.” He started to cry.

“It’s okay!” Dan said. “It’ll be okay. Your sister’s outside then?”

The boy nodded. “I think so.”

“Here, give me your hand and we’ll take you to her.”

The boy tentatively extended his arm just as the building settled again. He let out a tiny shriek and retracted his hand to squeeze his plushie as hard as he could.

“We’ve got to hurry,” Phil muttered, as if Dan didn’t already know.

“What’s your name?” Dan asked the boy.

“Philip,” the boy answered.

Dan smiled. “That’s a very good name. That’s my friend’s name here.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And he’s a hero for coming to get you, I think. I think Philips can often be heroes.”

“I’m not a hero,” the boy said, starting to cry. “I’m scared!”

“Heroes get scared all the time!” Dan said. “But they face their fears. Can you face your fear of coming out from there?”

The boy, little Philip, hesitated. Finally, he nodded, and reached his hand out to Dan’s.

Dan grasped the boy’s tiny hand and pulled him back to slide him out from under the bed on the now-uneven floor. “Come on!” Dan exclaimed.

They dashed out of the flat, the floor feeling like it was about to drop under their feet with every step. They rushed down the creaking stairs, hearing a crash behind them but resisting any temptation to look back. Soon enough, they were back across the street where all their neighbors now were. They looked at each other and smiled, tired and bruised, thankful to be alive and together.

The building sank down further, and the loud horrific groaning and creaking echoed through the neighborhood.

“Oh my god!” a teenage girl exclaimed from somewhere in the crowd. “Philip! You’re okay!” She ran up to Dan and Phil and took her little brother’s hand. She knelt down in front of him, checking him over for injury, and then she hugged him tightly. “Thank you so much,” she said to Dan and Phil, and sighed with relief. Dan nodded, still too out of breath to reply properly.

Dan, Phil, and all the former residents of the building watched as their building was reduced to rubble under the flat gray sky of the early morning.

 

***

 

“Listen to this, Phil,” Dan said, sitting in the lounge of the AirBnB where they temporarily resided until they found a new apartment. He was reading from an article about what had happened to their building. “‘The building’s foundation was faulty from the start. Steady rain over the years had eroded some of the concrete, however, contributing to the weakness of it. On top of this, the builder in charge of a renovation several years ago cut corners to save money, ignoring outright the building codes intended to prevent just such a disaster. Chief among his oversights were a set of apartments on the first residential floor that had been remodeled to receive a more fashionable open floor plan. Load-bearing walls were removed, and the struts and beams that took the place of those walls weren’t strong enough.’”

“That builder literally could have killed us!” Phil exclaimed.

“Everyone got out though,” Dan said with a sigh.

“So you did get to save some lives in the end,” Phil said.

“Hm?”

“Remember how sad you were that you couldn’t save anyone? In your drawings.”

“Oh.” Dan said. “Yeah.”

“Maybe you weren’t meant to save  _ them,” _ Phil offered. “Maybe instead the universe was guiding you towards saving the people in our building. Or maybe you were just meant to save that little boy.”

“Phil, come on. You know I don’t believe in anything being ‘meant’ to happen. The fact that I saved that boy was pure luck. You didn’t have to run back in there, and I didn’t have to follow you. And even if I did, if we hadn’t convinced him to come out, we’d all be dead.” Dan shook his head. “Besides, that seems like a massive overcomplication, showing me all those people and making me draw them. If the universe was trying to tell me about the building collapsing, it  _ could _ have just given me a nightmare about the building fucking collapsing.”

“If you’d had a dream that was  _ that _ obvious, you wouldn’t have known it was an omen!” Phil said defensively.

“Still. Not fate, just a coincidence. I stand by it.”

“I don’t know how you can say that after all you’ve just been through,” Phil said, rolling his eyes, “But either way, I’m glad it’s over.”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “Me too.”

As he scrolled through Tumblr later, he came across one of those ‘do you love the color of the sky’ posts.

“Oh, fuck  _ off,” _ he said, annoyed, and slammed his laptop shut.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I promise this wasn't just one long joke leading to an "I hate those color of the sky posts" punchline, it was just something I couldn't resist adding. lol
> 
> REALLY happy with this one - thanks so much to everyone in the Word War chat today for their encouragement. :D


End file.
